Voyager by Diana Gabaldon
unidentifiable slops, ducked through an archway, and down another twisting alleyway that seemed to lead through the bowels of Edinburgh. Dark walls flashed past, and splintered wooden doors, and then we were round a corner, in a small courtyard, where we paused for breath.
“What…on earth…did he do?” I gasped. I couldn’t imagine what the little Chinese could have done to a strapping young wench like the recent Maggie. From all appearances, she could have squashed him like a fly.
“Well, it’s the feet, ye ken,” Jamie explained, with a glance of resigned irritation at Mr. Willoughby.
“Feet?” I glanced involuntarily at the tiny Chinese man’s feet, neat miniatures shod in felt-soled black satin.
“Not his,” Jamie said, catching my glance. “The women’s.”
“What women?” I asked.
“Well, so far it’s only been whores,” he said, glancing through the archway in search of pursuit, “but ye canna tell what he may try. No judgment,” he explained briefly. “He’s a heathen.”
“I see,” I said, though so far, I didn’t. “What—”
“There they are!” A shout at the far end of the alley interrupted my question.
“Damn, I thought they’d give it up. Come on, this way!”
We were off once more, down an alley, back onto the Royal Mile, a few steps down the hill, and back into a close. I could hear shouts and cries behind us on the main street, but Jamie grasped my arm and jerked me after him through an open doorway, into a yard full of casks, bundles, and crates. He looked frantically about, then heaved Mr. Willoughby’s limp body into a large barrel filled with rubbish. Pausing only long enough to drop a piece of canvas on the Chinese’s head for concealment, he dragged me behind a wagon loaded with crates, and pulled me down beside him.
I was gasping from the unaccustomed exertion, and my heart was racing from the adrenaline of fear. Jamie’s face was flushed with cold and exercise, and his hair was sticking up in several directions, but he was scarcely breathing hard.
“Do you do this sort of thing all the time?” I asked, pressing a hand to my bosom in a vain effort to make my heart slow down.
“Not exactly,” he said, peering warily over the top of the wagon in search of pursuit.
The echo of pounding feet came faintly, then disappeared, and everything was quiet, save for the patter of rain on the boxes above us.
“They’ve gone past. We’d best stay here a bit, to make sure, though.” He lifted down a crate for me to sit on, procured another for himself, and sat down sighing, pushing the loose hair out of his face with one hand.
He gave me a lopsided smile. “I’m sorry, Sassenach. I didna think it would be quite so…”
“Eventful?” I finished for him. I smiled back and pulled out a handkerchief to wipe a drop of moisture from the end of my nose. “It’s all right.” I glanced at the large barrel, where stirrings and rustlings indicated that Mr. Willoughby was returning to a more or less conscious state. “Er…how do you know about the feet?”
“He told me; he’s a taste for the drink, ye ken,” he explained, with a glance at the barrel where his colleague lay concealed. “And when he’s taken a drop too much, he starts talkin’ about women’s feet, and all the horrible things he wants to do wi’ them.”
“What sort of horrible things can you do with a foot?” I was fascinated. “Surely the possibilities are limited.”
“No, they aren’t,” Jamie said grimly. “But it isna something I want to be talking about in the public street.”
A faint singsong came from the depths of the barrel behind us. It was hard to tell, amid the natural inflections of the language, but I thought Mr. Willoughby was asking a question of some sort.
“Shut up, ye wee poutworm,” Jamie said rudely. “Another word, and I’ll walk on your damn face myself; see how ye like that.” There was a high-pitched giggle, and the barrel fell silent.
“He wants someone to walk on his face?” I asked.
“Aye. You,” Jamie said briefly. He shrugged apologetically, and his cheeks flushed a deeper red. “I hadna time to tell him who ye were.”
“Does he speak English?”
“Oh, aye, in a way, but not many people understand him when he does. I mostly talk to him in Chinee.”
I stared at him. “You speak Chinese?”
He shrugged, tilting his head with a faint smile. “Well, I speak Chinee about as well as Mr. Willoughby speaks English, but then, he hasna got all that much choice in who he talks to, so he puts up wi’ me.”
My heart showed signs of returning to normal, and I leaned back against the wagon bed, my hood farther forward against the drizzle.
“Where on earth did he get a name like Willoughby?” I asked. While I was curious about the Chinese, I was even more curious about what a respectable Edinburgh printer was doing with one, but I felt a certain hesitance in prying into Jamie’s life. Freshly returned from the supposed dead—or its equivalent—I could hardly demand to know all the details of his life on the spot.
Jamie rubbed a hand across his nose. “Aye, well. It’s only that his real name’s Yi Tien Cho. He says it means ‘Leans against heaven.’”
“Too hard for the local Scots to pronounce?” Knowing the insular nature of most Scots, I wasn’t surprised that they were disinclined to venture into strange linguistic waters. Jamie, with his gift for tongues, was a genetic anomaly.
He smiled, teeth a white gleam in the gathering darkness. “Well, it’s no that, so much. It’s only, if ye say his name just a wee bit off, like, it sounds verra much like a coarse word in Gaelic. I thought Willoughby would maybe do better.”
“I see.” I thought perhaps under the circumstances, I shouldn’t ask just what the indelicate Gaelic word was. I glanced over my shoulder, but the coast seemed clear.
Jamie caught the gesture and rose, nodding. “Aye, we can go now; the lads will ha’ gone back to the tavern by now.”
“Won’t we have to pass by The World’s End on the way back to the printshop?” I asked dubiously. “Or is there a back way?” It was full dark by now, and the thought of stumbling through the middens and muddy back passages of Edinburgh was unappealing.
“Ah…no. We willna be going to the printshop.” I couldn’t see his face, but there seemed a certain reserve in his manner. Perhaps he had a residence somewhere else in the city? I felt a certain hollowness at the prospect; the room above the printshop was very clearly a monk’s cell; but perhaps he had an entire house somewhere else—with a family in it? There had been no time for any but the most essential exchange of information at the printshop. I had no way of knowing what he had done over the last twenty years, or what he might now be doing.
Still, he had plainly been glad—to say the least—to see me, and the air of frowning consideration he now bore might well have to do with his inebriated associate, rather than with me.
He bent over the barrel, saying something in Scots-accented Chinese. This was one of the odder sounds I had ever heard; rather like the squeaks of a bagpipe tuning up, I thought, vastly entertained by the performance.
Whatever he’d said, Mr. Willoughby replied to it volubly, interrupting himself with giggles and snorts. At last, the little Chinese climbed out of the barrel, his diminutive figure silhouetted by the light of a distant lantern in the alleyway. He sprang down with fair agility and promptly prostrated himself on the ground before me.
Bearing in mind what Jamie had told me about the feet, I took a quick step back, but Jamie laid a reassuring hand on my arm.
“Nay, it’s all right, Sassenach,” he said. “He’s only makin’ amends for his disrespect to ye earlier.”
“Oh. Well.” I looked dubiously at Mr. Willoughby, who was gabbling something to the ground under his face. At a loss for the proper etiquette, I stooped down and patted him on the head. Evidently that was all right, for he leapt to his feet and bowed to me several times, until Jamie told him impatiently to stop, and we made our way back to the Royal Mile.
The building Jamie led us to was discreetly hidden down a small close just above the Kirk of the Canongate, perhaps a quarter-mile above Holyrood Palace. I saw the lanterns mounted by the gates of the palace below, and shivered slightly at the sight. We had lived with Charles Stuart in the palace for nearly five weeks, in the early, victorious phase of his short career. Jamie’s uncle, Colum MacKenzie, had died there.
The door opened to Jamie’s knock, and all thoughts of the past vanished. The woman who stood peering out at us, candle in hand, was petite, dark-haired and elegant. Seeing Jamie, she drew him in with a glad cry, and kissed his cheek in greeting. My insides squeezed tight as a fist, but then relaxed again, as I heard him greet her as “Madame Jeanne.” Not what one would call a wife—nor yet, I hoped, a mistress.
Still, there was something about the woman that made me uneasy. She was clearly French, though she spoke English well—not so odd; Edinburgh was a seaport, and a fairly cosmopolitan city. She was dressed soberly, but richly, in heavy silk cut with a flair, but she wore a good deal more rouge and powder than the average Scotswoman. What disturbed me was the way she was looking at me—frowning, with a palpable air of distaste.
“Monsieur Fraser,” she said, touching Jamie on the shoulder with a possessive air that I didn’t like at all, “if I might have a word in private with you?”
Jamie, handing his cloak to the maid who came to fetch it, took a quick look at me, and read the situation at once.
“Of course, Madame Jeanne,” he said courteously, reaching out a hand to draw me forward. “But first—allow me to introduce my wife, Madame Fraser.”
My heart stopped beating for a moment, then resumed, with a force that I was sure was audible to everyone in the small entry hall. Jamie’s eyes met mine, and he smiled, the grip of his fingers tightening on my arm.
“Your…wife?” I couldn’t tell whether astonishment or horror was more pronounced on Madame Jeanne’s face. “But Monsieur Fraser…you bring her here? I thought…a woman…well enough, but to insult our own jeune filles is not good…but then…a wife…” Her mouth hung open unbecomingly, displaying several decayed molars. Then she shook herself suddenly back into an attitude of flustered poise, and inclined her head to me with an attempt at graciousness. “Bonsoir…Madame.”
“Likewise, I’m sure,” I said politely.
“Is my room ready, Madame?” Jamie said. Without waiting for an answer, he turned toward the stair, taking me with him. “We shall be spending the night.”
He glanced back at Mr. Willoughby, who had come in with us. He had sat down at once on the floor, where he sat dripping rain, a dreamy expression on his small, flat face.
“Er…?” Jamie made a small questioning motion toward Mr. Willoughby, his eyebrows raised at Madame Jeanne. She stared at the little Chinese for a moment as though wondering where he had come from, then, returned to herself, clapped her hands briskly for the maid.
“See if Mademoiselle Josie is at liberty, if you please, Pauline,” she said. “And then fetch up hot water and fresh towels for Monsieur Fraser and his…wife.” She spoke the word with a sort of stunned amazement, as though she still didn’t quite believe it.
“Oh, and one more thing, if you would be so kind, Madame?” Jamie leaned over the banister, smiling down at her. “My wife will require a fresh gown; she has had an unfortunate accident to her wardrobe. If you could provide something suitable by morning? Thank you, Madame Jeanne. Bonsoir!”
I didn’t speak, as I followed him up four flights of winding stairs to the top of the house. I was much too busy thinking, my mind in a whirl. “Pimpmaster,” the lad in the pub had called him. But surely that was only an epithet—such a thing was absolutely impossible. For the Jamie Fraser I had known, it was impossible, I corrected myself, looking up at the broad shoulders under the dark gray serge coat. But for this man?
I didn’t know quite what I had been expecting, but the room was quite ordinary, small and clean—though that was extraordinary, come to think of it—furnished with a stool, a simple bed and chest of drawers, upon which stood a basin and ewer and a clay candlestick with a beeswax candle, which Jamie lighted from the taper he had carried up.
He shucked off his wet coat and draped it carelessly on the stool, then sat down on the bed to remove his wet shoes.
“God,” he said, “I’m starving. I hope the cook’s not gone to bed yet.”
“Jamie…” I said.
“Take off your cloak, Sassenach,” he said, noticing me still standing against the door. “You’re soaked.”
“Yes. Well…yes.” I swallowed, then went on. “There’s just…er…Jamie, why have you got a regular room in a brothel?” I burst out.
He rubbed his chin, looking mildly embarrassed. “I’m sorry, Sassenach,” he said. “I know it wasna right to bring ye here, but it was the only place I could think of where we might get your dress mended at short notice, besides finding a hot supper. And then I had to put Mr. Willoughby where he wouldna get in more trouble, and as we had to come here anyway…well”—he glanced at the bed—“it’s a good deal more comfortable than my cot at the printshop. But perhaps it was a poor idea. We can leave, if ye feel it’s not—”
“I don’t mind about that,” I interrupted. “The question is—why have you got a room in a brothel? Are you such a good customer that—”
“A customer?” He stared up at me, eyebrows raised. “Here? God, Sassenach, what d’ye think I am?”
“Damned if I know,” I said. “That’s why I’m asking. Are you going to answer my question?”
He stared at his stockinged feet for a moment, wiggling his toes on the floorboard. At last he looked up at me, and answered calmly, “I suppose so. I’m not a customer of Jeanne’s, but she’s a customer of mine—and a good one. She keeps a room for me because I’m often abroad late on business, and I’d as soon have a place I can come to where I can have food and a bed at any hour, and privacy. The room is part of my arrangement with her.”
I had been holding my breath. Now I let out about half of it. “All right,” I said. “Then I suppose the next question is, what business has the owner of a brothel got with a printer?” The absurd thought that perhaps he printed advertising circulars for Madame Jeanne flitted through my brain, to be instantly dismissed.
“Well,” he said slowly. “No. I dinna think that’s the question.”
“It’s not?”
“No.” With one fluid move, he was off the bed and standing in front of me, close enough for me to have to look up into his face. I had a sudden urge to take a step backward, but didn’t, largely because there wasn’t room.
“The question is, Sassenach, why have ye come back?” he said softly.
“That’s a hell of a question to ask me!” My palms pressed flat against the rough wood of the door. “Why do you think I came back, damn you?”
“I dinna ken.” The soft Scottish voice was cool, but even in the dim light, I could see the pulse throbbing in the open throat of his shirt.
“Did ye come to be my wife again? Or only to bring me word of my daughter?” As though he sensed that his nearness unnerved me, he turned away suddenly, moving toward the window, where the shutters creaked in the wind.
“You are the mother of my child—for that alone, I owe ye my soul—for the knowledge that my life hasna been in vain—that my child is safe.” He turned again to face me, blue eyes intent.
“But it has been a time, Sassenach, since you and I were one. You’ll have had your life—then—and I have had mine here. You’ll know nothing of what I’ve done, or been. Did ye come now because ye wanted to—or because ye felt ye must?”
My throat felt tight, but I met his eyes.
“I came now because before…I thought you were dead. I thought you’d died at Culloden.”
His eyes dropped to the windowsill, where he picked at a splinter.
“Aye, I see,” he said softly. “Well…I meant to be dead.” He smiled, without humor, eyes intent on the splinter. “I tried hard enough.” He looked up at me again.
“How did ye find out I hadna died? Or where I was, come to that?”
“I had help. A young historian named Roger Wakefield found the records; he tracked you to Edinburgh. And when I saw ‘A. Malcolm,’ I knew…I thought…it might be you,” I ended lamely. Time enough for the details later.
“Aye, I see. And then ye came. But still…why?”
I stared at him without speaking for a moment. As though he felt the need of air, or perhaps only for something to do, he fumbled with the latch of the shutters and thrust them halfway open, flooding the room with the sound of rushing water, and the cold, fresh smell of rain.
“Are you trying to tell me you don’t want me to stay?” I said, finally. “Because if so…I mean, I know you’ll have a life now…maybe you have…other ties…” With unnaturally acute senses, I could hear the small sounds of activity throughout the house below, even above the rush of the storm, and the pounding of my own heart. My palms were damp, and I wiped them surreptitiously against my skirt.
He turned from the window to stare at me.
“Christ!” he said. “Not want ye?” His face was pale now, and his eyes unnaturally bright.
“I have burned for you for twenty years, Sassenach,” he said softly. “Do ye not know that? Jesus!” The breeze stirred the loose wisps of hair around his face, and he brushed them back impatiently.
“But I’m no the man ye knew, twenty years past, am I?” He turned away, with a gesture of frustration. “We know each other now less than we did when we wed.”
“Do you want me to go?” The blood was pounding thickly in my ears.
“No!” He swung quickly toward me, and gripped my shoulder tightly, making me pull back involuntarily. “No,” he said, more quietly. “I dinna want ye to go. I told ye so, and I meant it. But…I must know.” He bent his head toward me, his face alive with troubled question.
“Do ye want me?” he whispered. “Sassenach, will ye take me—and risk the man that I am, for the sake of the man ye knew?”
I felt a great wave of relief, mingled with fear. It ran from his hand on my shoulder to the tips of my toes, weakening my joints.
“It’s a lot too late to ask that,” I said, and reached to touch his cheek, where the rough beard was starting to show. It was soft under my fingers, like stiff plush. “Because I’ve already risked everything I had. But whoever you are now, Jamie Fraser—yes. Yes, I do want you.”
The light of the candle flame glowed blue in his eyes, as he held out his hands to me, and I stepped wordless into his embrace. I rested my face against his chest, marveling at the feel of him in my arms; so big, so solid and warm. Real, after the years of longing for a ghost I could not touch.
Disentangling himself after a moment, he looked down at me, and touched my cheek, very gently. He smiled slightly.
“You’ve the devil’s own courage, aye? But then, ye always did.”
I tried to smile at him, but my lips trembled.
“What about you? How do you know what I’m like? You don’t know what I’ve been doing for the last twenty years, either. I might be a horrible person, for all you know!”
The smile on his lips moved into his eyes, lighting them with humor. “I suppose ye might, at that. But, d’ye know, Sassenach—I dinna think I care?”
I stood looking at him for another minute, then heaved a deep sigh that popped a few more stitches in my gown.
“Neither do I.”
It seemed absurd to be shy with him, but shy I was. The adventures of the evening, and his words to me, had opened up the chasm of reality—those twenty unshared years that gaped between us, and the unknown future that lay beyond. Now we had come to the place where we would begin to know each other again, and discover whether we were in fact the same two who had once existed as one flesh—and whether we might be one again.
A knock at the door broke the tension. It was a small servingmaid, with a tray of supper. She bobbed shyly to me, smiled at Jamie, and laid both supper—cold meat, hot broth, and warm oatbread with butter—and the fire with a quick and practiced hand, then left us with a murmured “Good e’en to ye.”
We ate slowly, talking carefully only of neutral things; I told him how I had made my way from Craigh na Dun to Inverness, and made him laugh with stories of Mr. Graham and Master Georgie. He in turn told me about Mr. Willoughby; how he had found the little Chinese, half-starved and dead drunk, lying behind a row of casks on the docks at Burntisland, one of the shipping ports near Edinburgh.
We said nothing much of ourselves, but as we ate, I became increasingly conscious of his body, watching his fine, long hands as he poured wine and cut meat, seeing the twist of his powerful torso under his shirt, and the graceful line of neck and shoulder as he stooped to retrieve a fallen napkin. Once or twice, I thought I saw his gaze linger on me in the same way—a sort of hesitant avidity—but he quickly glanced away each time, hooding his eyes so that I could not tell what he saw or felt.
As the supper concluded, the same thought was uppermost in both our minds. It could scarcely be otherwise, considering the place in which we found ourselves. A tremor of mingled fear and anticipation shot through me.
At last, he drained his wineglass, set it down, and met my eyes directly.
“Will ye…” He stopped, the flush deepening on his features, but met my eyes, swallowed once, and went on. “Will ye come to bed wi’ me, then? I mean,” he hurried on, “it’s cold, and we’re both damp, and—”
“And there aren’t any chairs,” I finished for him. “All right.” I pulled my hand loose from his, and turned toward the bed, feeling a queer mix of excitement and hesitance that made my breath come short.
He pulled off his breeches and stockings quickly, then glanced at me.
“I’m sorry, Sassenach; I should have thought ye’d need help wi’ your laces.”
So he didn’t undress women often, I thought, before I could stop myself, and my lips curved in a smile at the thought.
“Well, it’s not laces,” I murmured, “but if you’d give a hand in the back there…” I laid aside my cloak, and turned my back to him, lifting my hair to expose the neck of the dress.
There was a puzzled silence. Then I felt a finger sliding slowly down the groove of my backbone.
“What…on earth…did he do?” I gasped. I couldn’t imagine what the little Chinese could have done to a strapping young wench like the recent Maggie. From all appearances, she could have squashed him like a fly.
“Well, it’s the feet, ye ken,” Jamie explained, with a glance of resigned irritation at Mr. Willoughby.
“Feet?” I glanced involuntarily at the tiny Chinese man’s feet, neat miniatures shod in felt-soled black satin.
“Not his,” Jamie said, catching my glance. “The women’s.”
“What women?” I asked.
“Well, so far it’s only been whores,” he said, glancing through the archway in search of pursuit, “but ye canna tell what he may try. No judgment,” he explained briefly. “He’s a heathen.”
“I see,” I said, though so far, I didn’t. “What—”
“There they are!” A shout at the far end of the alley interrupted my question.
“Damn, I thought they’d give it up. Come on, this way!”
We were off once more, down an alley, back onto the Royal Mile, a few steps down the hill, and back into a close. I could hear shouts and cries behind us on the main street, but Jamie grasped my arm and jerked me after him through an open doorway, into a yard full of casks, bundles, and crates. He looked frantically about, then heaved Mr. Willoughby’s limp body into a large barrel filled with rubbish. Pausing only long enough to drop a piece of canvas on the Chinese’s head for concealment, he dragged me behind a wagon loaded with crates, and pulled me down beside him.
I was gasping from the unaccustomed exertion, and my heart was racing from the adrenaline of fear. Jamie’s face was flushed with cold and exercise, and his hair was sticking up in several directions, but he was scarcely breathing hard.
“Do you do this sort of thing all the time?” I asked, pressing a hand to my bosom in a vain effort to make my heart slow down.
“Not exactly,” he said, peering warily over the top of the wagon in search of pursuit.
The echo of pounding feet came faintly, then disappeared, and everything was quiet, save for the patter of rain on the boxes above us.
“They’ve gone past. We’d best stay here a bit, to make sure, though.” He lifted down a crate for me to sit on, procured another for himself, and sat down sighing, pushing the loose hair out of his face with one hand.
He gave me a lopsided smile. “I’m sorry, Sassenach. I didna think it would be quite so…”
“Eventful?” I finished for him. I smiled back and pulled out a handkerchief to wipe a drop of moisture from the end of my nose. “It’s all right.” I glanced at the large barrel, where stirrings and rustlings indicated that Mr. Willoughby was returning to a more or less conscious state. “Er…how do you know about the feet?”
“He told me; he’s a taste for the drink, ye ken,” he explained, with a glance at the barrel where his colleague lay concealed. “And when he’s taken a drop too much, he starts talkin’ about women’s feet, and all the horrible things he wants to do wi’ them.”
“What sort of horrible things can you do with a foot?” I was fascinated. “Surely the possibilities are limited.”
“No, they aren’t,” Jamie said grimly. “But it isna something I want to be talking about in the public street.”
A faint singsong came from the depths of the barrel behind us. It was hard to tell, amid the natural inflections of the language, but I thought Mr. Willoughby was asking a question of some sort.
“Shut up, ye wee poutworm,” Jamie said rudely. “Another word, and I’ll walk on your damn face myself; see how ye like that.” There was a high-pitched giggle, and the barrel fell silent.
“He wants someone to walk on his face?” I asked.
“Aye. You,” Jamie said briefly. He shrugged apologetically, and his cheeks flushed a deeper red. “I hadna time to tell him who ye were.”
“Does he speak English?”
“Oh, aye, in a way, but not many people understand him when he does. I mostly talk to him in Chinee.”
I stared at him. “You speak Chinese?”
He shrugged, tilting his head with a faint smile. “Well, I speak Chinee about as well as Mr. Willoughby speaks English, but then, he hasna got all that much choice in who he talks to, so he puts up wi’ me.”
My heart showed signs of returning to normal, and I leaned back against the wagon bed, my hood farther forward against the drizzle.
“Where on earth did he get a name like Willoughby?” I asked. While I was curious about the Chinese, I was even more curious about what a respectable Edinburgh printer was doing with one, but I felt a certain hesitance in prying into Jamie’s life. Freshly returned from the supposed dead—or its equivalent—I could hardly demand to know all the details of his life on the spot.
Jamie rubbed a hand across his nose. “Aye, well. It’s only that his real name’s Yi Tien Cho. He says it means ‘Leans against heaven.’”
“Too hard for the local Scots to pronounce?” Knowing the insular nature of most Scots, I wasn’t surprised that they were disinclined to venture into strange linguistic waters. Jamie, with his gift for tongues, was a genetic anomaly.
He smiled, teeth a white gleam in the gathering darkness. “Well, it’s no that, so much. It’s only, if ye say his name just a wee bit off, like, it sounds verra much like a coarse word in Gaelic. I thought Willoughby would maybe do better.”
“I see.” I thought perhaps under the circumstances, I shouldn’t ask just what the indelicate Gaelic word was. I glanced over my shoulder, but the coast seemed clear.
Jamie caught the gesture and rose, nodding. “Aye, we can go now; the lads will ha’ gone back to the tavern by now.”
“Won’t we have to pass by The World’s End on the way back to the printshop?” I asked dubiously. “Or is there a back way?” It was full dark by now, and the thought of stumbling through the middens and muddy back passages of Edinburgh was unappealing.
“Ah…no. We willna be going to the printshop.” I couldn’t see his face, but there seemed a certain reserve in his manner. Perhaps he had a residence somewhere else in the city? I felt a certain hollowness at the prospect; the room above the printshop was very clearly a monk’s cell; but perhaps he had an entire house somewhere else—with a family in it? There had been no time for any but the most essential exchange of information at the printshop. I had no way of knowing what he had done over the last twenty years, or what he might now be doing.
Still, he had plainly been glad—to say the least—to see me, and the air of frowning consideration he now bore might well have to do with his inebriated associate, rather than with me.
He bent over the barrel, saying something in Scots-accented Chinese. This was one of the odder sounds I had ever heard; rather like the squeaks of a bagpipe tuning up, I thought, vastly entertained by the performance.
Whatever he’d said, Mr. Willoughby replied to it volubly, interrupting himself with giggles and snorts. At last, the little Chinese climbed out of the barrel, his diminutive figure silhouetted by the light of a distant lantern in the alleyway. He sprang down with fair agility and promptly prostrated himself on the ground before me.
Bearing in mind what Jamie had told me about the feet, I took a quick step back, but Jamie laid a reassuring hand on my arm.
“Nay, it’s all right, Sassenach,” he said. “He’s only makin’ amends for his disrespect to ye earlier.”
“Oh. Well.” I looked dubiously at Mr. Willoughby, who was gabbling something to the ground under his face. At a loss for the proper etiquette, I stooped down and patted him on the head. Evidently that was all right, for he leapt to his feet and bowed to me several times, until Jamie told him impatiently to stop, and we made our way back to the Royal Mile.
The building Jamie led us to was discreetly hidden down a small close just above the Kirk of the Canongate, perhaps a quarter-mile above Holyrood Palace. I saw the lanterns mounted by the gates of the palace below, and shivered slightly at the sight. We had lived with Charles Stuart in the palace for nearly five weeks, in the early, victorious phase of his short career. Jamie’s uncle, Colum MacKenzie, had died there.
The door opened to Jamie’s knock, and all thoughts of the past vanished. The woman who stood peering out at us, candle in hand, was petite, dark-haired and elegant. Seeing Jamie, she drew him in with a glad cry, and kissed his cheek in greeting. My insides squeezed tight as a fist, but then relaxed again, as I heard him greet her as “Madame Jeanne.” Not what one would call a wife—nor yet, I hoped, a mistress.
Still, there was something about the woman that made me uneasy. She was clearly French, though she spoke English well—not so odd; Edinburgh was a seaport, and a fairly cosmopolitan city. She was dressed soberly, but richly, in heavy silk cut with a flair, but she wore a good deal more rouge and powder than the average Scotswoman. What disturbed me was the way she was looking at me—frowning, with a palpable air of distaste.
“Monsieur Fraser,” she said, touching Jamie on the shoulder with a possessive air that I didn’t like at all, “if I might have a word in private with you?”
Jamie, handing his cloak to the maid who came to fetch it, took a quick look at me, and read the situation at once.
“Of course, Madame Jeanne,” he said courteously, reaching out a hand to draw me forward. “But first—allow me to introduce my wife, Madame Fraser.”
My heart stopped beating for a moment, then resumed, with a force that I was sure was audible to everyone in the small entry hall. Jamie’s eyes met mine, and he smiled, the grip of his fingers tightening on my arm.
“Your…wife?” I couldn’t tell whether astonishment or horror was more pronounced on Madame Jeanne’s face. “But Monsieur Fraser…you bring her here? I thought…a woman…well enough, but to insult our own jeune filles is not good…but then…a wife…” Her mouth hung open unbecomingly, displaying several decayed molars. Then she shook herself suddenly back into an attitude of flustered poise, and inclined her head to me with an attempt at graciousness. “Bonsoir…Madame.”
“Likewise, I’m sure,” I said politely.
“Is my room ready, Madame?” Jamie said. Without waiting for an answer, he turned toward the stair, taking me with him. “We shall be spending the night.”
He glanced back at Mr. Willoughby, who had come in with us. He had sat down at once on the floor, where he sat dripping rain, a dreamy expression on his small, flat face.
“Er…?” Jamie made a small questioning motion toward Mr. Willoughby, his eyebrows raised at Madame Jeanne. She stared at the little Chinese for a moment as though wondering where he had come from, then, returned to herself, clapped her hands briskly for the maid.
“See if Mademoiselle Josie is at liberty, if you please, Pauline,” she said. “And then fetch up hot water and fresh towels for Monsieur Fraser and his…wife.” She spoke the word with a sort of stunned amazement, as though she still didn’t quite believe it.
“Oh, and one more thing, if you would be so kind, Madame?” Jamie leaned over the banister, smiling down at her. “My wife will require a fresh gown; she has had an unfortunate accident to her wardrobe. If you could provide something suitable by morning? Thank you, Madame Jeanne. Bonsoir!”
I didn’t speak, as I followed him up four flights of winding stairs to the top of the house. I was much too busy thinking, my mind in a whirl. “Pimpmaster,” the lad in the pub had called him. But surely that was only an epithet—such a thing was absolutely impossible. For the Jamie Fraser I had known, it was impossible, I corrected myself, looking up at the broad shoulders under the dark gray serge coat. But for this man?
I didn’t know quite what I had been expecting, but the room was quite ordinary, small and clean—though that was extraordinary, come to think of it—furnished with a stool, a simple bed and chest of drawers, upon which stood a basin and ewer and a clay candlestick with a beeswax candle, which Jamie lighted from the taper he had carried up.
He shucked off his wet coat and draped it carelessly on the stool, then sat down on the bed to remove his wet shoes.
“God,” he said, “I’m starving. I hope the cook’s not gone to bed yet.”
“Jamie…” I said.
“Take off your cloak, Sassenach,” he said, noticing me still standing against the door. “You’re soaked.”
“Yes. Well…yes.” I swallowed, then went on. “There’s just…er…Jamie, why have you got a regular room in a brothel?” I burst out.
He rubbed his chin, looking mildly embarrassed. “I’m sorry, Sassenach,” he said. “I know it wasna right to bring ye here, but it was the only place I could think of where we might get your dress mended at short notice, besides finding a hot supper. And then I had to put Mr. Willoughby where he wouldna get in more trouble, and as we had to come here anyway…well”—he glanced at the bed—“it’s a good deal more comfortable than my cot at the printshop. But perhaps it was a poor idea. We can leave, if ye feel it’s not—”
“I don’t mind about that,” I interrupted. “The question is—why have you got a room in a brothel? Are you such a good customer that—”
“A customer?” He stared up at me, eyebrows raised. “Here? God, Sassenach, what d’ye think I am?”
“Damned if I know,” I said. “That’s why I’m asking. Are you going to answer my question?”
He stared at his stockinged feet for a moment, wiggling his toes on the floorboard. At last he looked up at me, and answered calmly, “I suppose so. I’m not a customer of Jeanne’s, but she’s a customer of mine—and a good one. She keeps a room for me because I’m often abroad late on business, and I’d as soon have a place I can come to where I can have food and a bed at any hour, and privacy. The room is part of my arrangement with her.”
I had been holding my breath. Now I let out about half of it. “All right,” I said. “Then I suppose the next question is, what business has the owner of a brothel got with a printer?” The absurd thought that perhaps he printed advertising circulars for Madame Jeanne flitted through my brain, to be instantly dismissed.
“Well,” he said slowly. “No. I dinna think that’s the question.”
“It’s not?”
“No.” With one fluid move, he was off the bed and standing in front of me, close enough for me to have to look up into his face. I had a sudden urge to take a step backward, but didn’t, largely because there wasn’t room.
“The question is, Sassenach, why have ye come back?” he said softly.
“That’s a hell of a question to ask me!” My palms pressed flat against the rough wood of the door. “Why do you think I came back, damn you?”
“I dinna ken.” The soft Scottish voice was cool, but even in the dim light, I could see the pulse throbbing in the open throat of his shirt.
“Did ye come to be my wife again? Or only to bring me word of my daughter?” As though he sensed that his nearness unnerved me, he turned away suddenly, moving toward the window, where the shutters creaked in the wind.
“You are the mother of my child—for that alone, I owe ye my soul—for the knowledge that my life hasna been in vain—that my child is safe.” He turned again to face me, blue eyes intent.
“But it has been a time, Sassenach, since you and I were one. You’ll have had your life—then—and I have had mine here. You’ll know nothing of what I’ve done, or been. Did ye come now because ye wanted to—or because ye felt ye must?”
My throat felt tight, but I met his eyes.
“I came now because before…I thought you were dead. I thought you’d died at Culloden.”
His eyes dropped to the windowsill, where he picked at a splinter.
“Aye, I see,” he said softly. “Well…I meant to be dead.” He smiled, without humor, eyes intent on the splinter. “I tried hard enough.” He looked up at me again.
“How did ye find out I hadna died? Or where I was, come to that?”
“I had help. A young historian named Roger Wakefield found the records; he tracked you to Edinburgh. And when I saw ‘A. Malcolm,’ I knew…I thought…it might be you,” I ended lamely. Time enough for the details later.
“Aye, I see. And then ye came. But still…why?”
I stared at him without speaking for a moment. As though he felt the need of air, or perhaps only for something to do, he fumbled with the latch of the shutters and thrust them halfway open, flooding the room with the sound of rushing water, and the cold, fresh smell of rain.
“Are you trying to tell me you don’t want me to stay?” I said, finally. “Because if so…I mean, I know you’ll have a life now…maybe you have…other ties…” With unnaturally acute senses, I could hear the small sounds of activity throughout the house below, even above the rush of the storm, and the pounding of my own heart. My palms were damp, and I wiped them surreptitiously against my skirt.
He turned from the window to stare at me.
“Christ!” he said. “Not want ye?” His face was pale now, and his eyes unnaturally bright.
“I have burned for you for twenty years, Sassenach,” he said softly. “Do ye not know that? Jesus!” The breeze stirred the loose wisps of hair around his face, and he brushed them back impatiently.
“But I’m no the man ye knew, twenty years past, am I?” He turned away, with a gesture of frustration. “We know each other now less than we did when we wed.”
“Do you want me to go?” The blood was pounding thickly in my ears.
“No!” He swung quickly toward me, and gripped my shoulder tightly, making me pull back involuntarily. “No,” he said, more quietly. “I dinna want ye to go. I told ye so, and I meant it. But…I must know.” He bent his head toward me, his face alive with troubled question.
“Do ye want me?” he whispered. “Sassenach, will ye take me—and risk the man that I am, for the sake of the man ye knew?”
I felt a great wave of relief, mingled with fear. It ran from his hand on my shoulder to the tips of my toes, weakening my joints.
“It’s a lot too late to ask that,” I said, and reached to touch his cheek, where the rough beard was starting to show. It was soft under my fingers, like stiff plush. “Because I’ve already risked everything I had. But whoever you are now, Jamie Fraser—yes. Yes, I do want you.”
The light of the candle flame glowed blue in his eyes, as he held out his hands to me, and I stepped wordless into his embrace. I rested my face against his chest, marveling at the feel of him in my arms; so big, so solid and warm. Real, after the years of longing for a ghost I could not touch.
Disentangling himself after a moment, he looked down at me, and touched my cheek, very gently. He smiled slightly.
“You’ve the devil’s own courage, aye? But then, ye always did.”
I tried to smile at him, but my lips trembled.
“What about you? How do you know what I’m like? You don’t know what I’ve been doing for the last twenty years, either. I might be a horrible person, for all you know!”
The smile on his lips moved into his eyes, lighting them with humor. “I suppose ye might, at that. But, d’ye know, Sassenach—I dinna think I care?”
I stood looking at him for another minute, then heaved a deep sigh that popped a few more stitches in my gown.
“Neither do I.”
It seemed absurd to be shy with him, but shy I was. The adventures of the evening, and his words to me, had opened up the chasm of reality—those twenty unshared years that gaped between us, and the unknown future that lay beyond. Now we had come to the place where we would begin to know each other again, and discover whether we were in fact the same two who had once existed as one flesh—and whether we might be one again.
A knock at the door broke the tension. It was a small servingmaid, with a tray of supper. She bobbed shyly to me, smiled at Jamie, and laid both supper—cold meat, hot broth, and warm oatbread with butter—and the fire with a quick and practiced hand, then left us with a murmured “Good e’en to ye.”
We ate slowly, talking carefully only of neutral things; I told him how I had made my way from Craigh na Dun to Inverness, and made him laugh with stories of Mr. Graham and Master Georgie. He in turn told me about Mr. Willoughby; how he had found the little Chinese, half-starved and dead drunk, lying behind a row of casks on the docks at Burntisland, one of the shipping ports near Edinburgh.
We said nothing much of ourselves, but as we ate, I became increasingly conscious of his body, watching his fine, long hands as he poured wine and cut meat, seeing the twist of his powerful torso under his shirt, and the graceful line of neck and shoulder as he stooped to retrieve a fallen napkin. Once or twice, I thought I saw his gaze linger on me in the same way—a sort of hesitant avidity—but he quickly glanced away each time, hooding his eyes so that I could not tell what he saw or felt.
As the supper concluded, the same thought was uppermost in both our minds. It could scarcely be otherwise, considering the place in which we found ourselves. A tremor of mingled fear and anticipation shot through me.
At last, he drained his wineglass, set it down, and met my eyes directly.
“Will ye…” He stopped, the flush deepening on his features, but met my eyes, swallowed once, and went on. “Will ye come to bed wi’ me, then? I mean,” he hurried on, “it’s cold, and we’re both damp, and—”
“And there aren’t any chairs,” I finished for him. “All right.” I pulled my hand loose from his, and turned toward the bed, feeling a queer mix of excitement and hesitance that made my breath come short.
He pulled off his breeches and stockings quickly, then glanced at me.
“I’m sorry, Sassenach; I should have thought ye’d need help wi’ your laces.”
So he didn’t undress women often, I thought, before I could stop myself, and my lips curved in a smile at the thought.
“Well, it’s not laces,” I murmured, “but if you’d give a hand in the back there…” I laid aside my cloak, and turned my back to him, lifting my hair to expose the neck of the dress.
There was a puzzled silence. Then I felt a finger sliding slowly down the groove of my backbone.